Maszman Speaks!

Our cro­cuses have come up, just in time for Spring!

I don’t write much about the Church, but I have noth­ing but the most sear­ing con­tempt for those priests who preyed on the inno­cent and dou­ble that for those bish­ops and oth­ers in the Church you cov­ered up for them for so many years. I took no com­fort in the false notion that it was a strictly Amer­i­can prob­lem, I have no joy that it is equally wide­spread across Europe. It is time for the Church to undergo a sec­ond Ref­or­ma­tion, to con­front the abuses it has con­doned and seek for­give­ness for its sins. And just as in Con­fes­sion, it must sub­ject itself to civil author­ity and accept that pun­ish­ment as well.

I’ll be hon­est, I’m not sure if end­ing manda­tory celibacy is part of the answer or not. The Apos­tles were not celi­bate, some had wives and fam­i­lies. Celibacy has more of a polit­i­cal ratio­nale (from when the Church was syn­ony­mous with the rul­ing class) than a reli­gious one. It should be optional, as it in the East­ern rite. No mat­ter what, if it helps attract the well-adjusted, car­ing, and com­mit­ted to the priest­hood, it’s not some­thing that should be avoided any­more. I think the same for women in the priest­hood, though I believe celibacy will be ended before that hap­pens, regard­less of how much sense it makes.

The Church needs to be con­ser­v­a­tive, but it must not be out of touch with its mem­bers and itself. What made sense in the Mid­dle Ages doesn’t make sense in the 21^st cen­tury. And abuse and coverups are wrong, and always have been.

You know what you must do.

As I’ve men­tioned before, I was a Palm user from way back but when it became time to replace my Treo, I ended up with a Droid. For me it made sense because Palm’s new WebOS was not com­pat­i­ble with its older Pal­mOS and if I was going to make the break, I wanted to go with the plat­form that looked like it would be around in a cou­ple of years. But I had no idea how poorly Palm was really doing. In ret­ro­spect it was a smart move on my part, even if I felt a lit­tle funny about mak­ing it.

Palm’s new phones seem to be pretty good but no one is buy­ing them. At this stage, Palm’s only chance for sur­vival is being pur­chased. Apple would be a nat­ural fit, given the gen­e­sis of the orig­i­nal com­pany, but Microsoft has also been men­tioned. But why would either buy Palm? Apple is happy with it’s iPhone and Microsoft’s new Win­dows Phone 7 is prob­a­bly too far along to need much of a tech­nol­ogy infu­sion. The irony is that Palm may have sur­vived too long, had it failed sooner it might have made for a much more attrac­tive package.

Color Pal­lette

Orig­i­nally uploaded by tom­masz

It’s not often you see a pal­let that looks like this one.

Every­thing you know about hap­pi­ness is wrong.

3/18/2010 Mys­tery Photo

Orig­i­nally uploaded by tom­masz

Can you guess what this is?